The US and Iran on a dead end path to war?

Unless strong political leadership and decisive diplomatic efforts are quickly shown on all sides, war between the US and Iran will become increasingly probable due to the elimination of all other policy options.

There
are three ways war between US and Iran can begin: through a
deliberate decision by either Washington, Tehran or Tel Aviv; through
a naval incident in the Persian Gulf that escalates out of control; or through the gradual elimination of all other policy options - the
dead end path to war.

Of
these three, it is the last one that is most worrisome and likely.

The
Obama administration is not seeking war with Iran. Obama's push back
against the Netanyahu Government's campaign for war with Iran and the
harsh statements from the US military against such reckless
adventurism demonstrates this lack of desire for war.

While
neoconservative elements within the US foreign policy elite may
differ, they remain dangerous but are in minority. A very timely
report
published by the Iran Project last week showed that the center of the
US foreign policy establishment not only opposes war, it views it
as a grave mistake.

The
report was signed by close to 30 prominent foreign policy hands in
Washington, including former National Security Advisers Zbigniew
Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, former Undersecretary of State Thomas
Pickering, president of the Ploughshares Foundation Joe Cirincione,
and former chairman of the Federal Reserve bank, Paul Volcker.

The
Netanyahu government is unlikely to initiate war, in spite of its
never-ending threats. As I explain here,
Israel draws a lot of benefits from threatening war, but actually
starting one is an entirely different matter with many unpredictable
repercussions.

Moreover,
it is the assessment
of the US intelligence and military that the Iranian government is
unlikely to start a war itself. Still, the Iran Project report was
much needed to create a political buffer against the perpetual
campaign for war by hawks on all sides.

Thus, a
premeditated decision to start a war seems unlikely at the moment.

The
second risk is war as a consequence of a naval incident in the
Persian Gulf. This has long been a concern of the Pentagon. Former
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen made this very
clear before he left his post. “We
haven’t had a connection with Iran since 1979,”
he said in September 2011. “Even in the darkest days of the Cold
War, we had links to the Soviet Union. We are not talking to Iran, so
we don’t understand each other. If something happens, it’s
virtually assured that we won’t get it right — that there will be
miscalculation which would be extremely dangerous in that part of the
world.”

The
US has tried on several occasions to increase the communication
between its own and Iran's naval forces, but Tehran has so far
rejected the offers.

Still,
the most worrisome risk is not incidents and accidents that are
impossible to predict, but a path of perpetual escalation that
eliminates all other policy options and renders war inevitable.

The west and Iran are both deliberately and accidentally on such a path.

Both
are pursuing a dual track policy aimed at negotiating while
simultaneously escalating the conflict by increasing pressure on the
other side. The west does this by adding more and more sanctions on
Iran, and Iran pressures the west by expanding its nuclear programme and
by reducing its collaboration with the International Atomic Energy
Agency.

Not
only has this created a lose-lose dynamic, in which both sides are
worse off today than they were two or more years ago, but the dual
track policy has an addictive quality to it in the sense that after
pursuing it for a few years, it is extremely difficult politically to
abandon or adjust it.

I wrote
in a commentary
for Huffington Post earlier this year that both sides are running out
of ways to make life miserable for the other. Their escalatory steps
are fewer and fewer and more and more dangerous, making it infinitely
more dangerous to continue this unsophisticated chicken-race.

A
European diplomat told me last week that it is actually worse: the
two sides are also running out of exit-ramps; they have fewer and
fewer deescalatory
options.

Unless
strong political leadership is quickly shown on all sides, with
decisive diplomatic effort to escape the zone of political paralysis
created by the dual track policies, we will descend further into this
dead end. Electing a president that prefers to avoid war is not
enough. The dual track policy is a one-way street towards
confrontation.

War -
regardless of how much we prefer to avoid it or know it is
strategically disastrous - may soon stare at us as the sole remaining
outcome.

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